


I'm Here

by EnInkahootz



Category: Jekyll (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multiple Personalities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12846831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnInkahootz/pseuds/EnInkahootz
Summary: The story of Hyde's initial formation inside Tom Jackman's head.





	I'm Here

**Author's Note:**

> This is Hyde's side of what we see in the flashback in Episode 4.

At first he was only an instant. In a blank place, an unknown place, he flickered like a firefly. And then he was gone.

~

The second time was longer. For the briefest of moments, he noticed a hint of a desire to be. A call to exist. He tried to understand what that meant, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know anything and he barely was anything. He tried to move but he had no body. Yet when he strained he could sense there was a wisp of something tangible, just out of reach. And then he was gone.

~

When he woke up again, he realized that he was someone. He had no idea who he was, or what it meant to be someone, but he knew that he was. He was aware, yet everything was still a vast dark uncertainty. A secret he didn’t know. And then he was gone.

~

The next time there was a feeling, a fully formed feeling. He wasn’t a firefly anymore, but a bright burst of lightning. The burst was quick, but in that instant, whatever it was that was tangible felt very hot. And so he had learned what hot felt like, and wanted more. And then he was gone.

~

He wasn’t sure how many times after that it was, but eventually, he learned to find himself a bit earlier in the process. Rather than being mysteriously awoken, he struggled to wake himself up, to pull himself out of whatever trapped him in empty sleep, locked him out of existence. Sometimes it didn’t work, but he had to keep trying. He felt a hunger, a yearning for whatever he had experienced before - that heat. He needed more of it, always.

When he felt it, he grasped to hold onto it for as long as he could. Bolts of lightening shot through where his body might have been. They struck brightly against the dark, and he felt bright and dark, broken and whole, all at once. And then he was gone.

~

Each time he struggled with all his might, and it was with sheer force of will that he finally formed his body. In a violent flash of lightening it came, suddenly solid and warm. In shock and relief, he looked down at a pair of hands, then tried to use them to touch what he hoped was his face. The hands felt the face, and the face felt the hands. He really was someone after all. And then he was gone.

~

It was a game now, a puzzle to solve. He had a body, but didn’t know where it was located. He had a desire, but he didn’t know how to get it as often as he seemed to need it. He learned to control the lightening with his hands. He used its light to try and see around him. There didn’t seem to be anything there but him. There were no clues as to how to find the heat. He longed for it. He felt that he needed it in order to find himself. He ran his hands over his body, trying to find it. His hands felt warm on his skin, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t what he craved. And then he was gone.

~

And then he awoke, suddenly surrounded by the heat again. It was touching him everywhere, he was inside of it, and he was one with it. He sank blissfully into it. When he had the heat with him, he could feel his body in ways he didn’t understand. He existed more than he had before. He became aware of his erection, and was surprised and curious. He felt that he was on the edge of learning the secret, the answer to the game. And then he was gone.

~

When he woke up inside the heat next time, he remembered about his erection right away. He looked down, examined it with his eyes and his hands. It felt a little like the heat when he touched himself there. It wasn’t the same, but it felt good. He tried touching it more, wrapping his fingers around it. He gasped, aroused and alarmed, at the feel of it in his hand. Flickers of lightening scattered themselves across the darkness around him. And then he was gone.

~

Upon waking a few times later, he decided right away to focus on how to stay awake longer. He needed to be awake for longer to learn the answers to all the questions he was accumulating. Not just about the heat, but about how his body worked, who he was, where he was, and whether or not there was another place besides this one. Perhaps he himself was somehow the heat, or perhaps the heat was like food for him. He wondered how he could need it so badly. And then there was the matter of the Other. That presence who was everywhere but couldn’t be seen. To win the game he would need answers.

He discovered that engaging with his body helped him stay awake. He squeezed his hands around his arms, tapped his cheeks lightly, and stretched out his fingers, arms and legs. Thinking about his body helped too. It was the one thing he had for sure.

The blank sleep of nothingness was trying to get ahold of him. He chanted to the darkness – I am someone. I am someone. I am someone. He held on for a while that way. And then he was gone.

~

Were there other someones, he wondered the time after that. Maybe he didn’t have to be alone. There was the Other, at least, but he wasn’t sure if the Other was a friend, or someone to fear. He wished he could find out but he didn’t know how to communicate with anyone. He wondered if there was even a way, and then he wondered if the Other even existed at all. Unseen, unknown, maybe the Other was imaginary. Maybe there was no one else at all. Maybe there was only the suffocating darkness, and him. And then he was gone.

~

He decided that he had to show he was someone, to make it clear to himself, and to whatever else might exist. He had to prove it to win the game. And then he would be able to find out more about everything. He examined his body and what it could do. He focused on its movements and closed his eyes. In his mind he imagined himself doing things. They were things he had never done and he didn’t know where the images came from. In one of them, he was sitting at a big wooden desk, writing with a pen on a pile of papers. He focused on that one, trying to understand.

When he opened his eyes he found the desk he had pictured had appeared before him. There was a stack of papers on it, with a pen beside it, just like he had envisioned. There had never been anything but darkness here before. Now he realized he could make whatever he wanted, just by imagining it. He did, and it helped him feel less alone.

He sat back in the recliner he’d imagined for himself. And then he was gone.

~

The heat came to bring him back to life. It seemed like if he waited long enough, it would always find him again. Yet the spaces between their meetings felt like eternities, and he yearned always for more. He still didn’t understand what the heat was, but it made his body do things that felt both shocking and natural. And then he was gone.

~

After an unknown number of immersions in the heat, he woke up with a great motivation, and decided to try writing something. If he could leave a note for someone, maybe for the Other, he might win the game. He had never written anything before, but for some reason he felt like he knew how.

He sat down at the brown wooden desk. The chair was also brown, and not as comfortable as his recliner. He picked up the pen.

For a while he just stared at the paper because he couldn’t remember what to do. But ultimately it came to him. He pressed the pen to the paper. He didn’t know what to write. He didn’t have a name. He wasn’t sure what he could he say so that someone would know he was real. He wanted to say that he was someone. He wanted to say that he didn’t want to be alone anymore. That he was trying to find a way out, if there was one, because he wanted to meet them, if there was anyone to meet. That he was ready to be somewhere besides where he was, somewhere besides this place, where there was no one but him.

“I’m coming,” he wrote without thinking.

Then he felt the claws of the dark sleep trying to sink into him, and he was frightened and desperate.

“I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming…” he wrote it over and over again, page after page, until he could fight the claws off no longer. And then he was asleep, but he wasn’t gone.

~

Sometime that felt soon, he woke up inside the heat again. It was everything. Inside it he thought he might find answers, clues for the game. But when he tried to think he could only feel his body, rocking and flashing bolts of lightening until the end. And then he was asleep, but he wasn’t gone.

~

The next time, he tried to think what else he might imagine to help him find a way out. He thought about exits and tried to remember what they looked like. He searched his mind, which was full of things he both knew and didn’t know. Scattered pictures and disjointed sounds. Bits and pieces of foreign, yet familiar, information.

A door appeared before him. He grinned and sighed in relief. He had done it. This was it.

But when he tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge. He tried knocking because it felt like the thing to do. No one answered and no one came. He pushed on the door with all his might. He slammed his body into it. But he was still trapped. He had come so close; he had thought he was winning. The frustration overwhelmed him, and he pounded on the door with his fists until slumber came to take him away. And then he was asleep, but he wasn’t gone.

~

Three times later, he was awoken by something entirely new. It was sort of like the heat; it was certainly hot. But it felt different too. It made him clench his fists and bare his teeth. It confused him, even as it thrilled him, and he felt like he was losing the game. Aimlessly he swung his arms and kicked his feet. Something was scorching inside him, and it wasn’t nice like the heat. But, he found he still liked it.

He screamed. He screamed loudly and for the first time. It felt good. His eyes had already been open, but somehow he felt like he had only just then opened them for the very first time.

His surroundings seemed to freeze for an instant. Perhaps the Other had heard him, or felt him. He tried screaming again and again. He tried yelling. He tried growling. He tried roaring. It felt good, but it made him tired. Lights flickered, but he hadn’t made lighting. He wondered where the light had come from. And then he fell asleep, but he wasn’t gone.

~

He pulled himself awake. He was too close to winning, to being free, to understanding. And the new kind of heat, the violent kind, was pulsing unbearably throughout his body. He tried to open his eyes again. Not his regular eyes, but those eyes that he had somehow opened before. Those eyes that were somehow his, but also someone else’s. He knew he could take control of those eyes, if only he could focus. He tried to grasp on, and he realized he could feel more than just eyes. There was an entire other body there – it was the Other’s body. But it felt like it was his too. Maybe this was the game – to win that body. He wanted to win.

But the more he pushed the more he felt held down. Lights flickered all around him, but they had not come from him. He realized that the Other was trying to keep him trapped, trying to keep him in the dark. He had hoped the Other would be a friend, but the Other was the opponent. Enraged by this betrayed, he pushed harder, and a plane of darkness came tumbling down like bricks, allowing him access to the body.

He felt like he was in both places - just as he had felt two sets of eyes, he now felt two bodies. One was his own, the one he was used to, and he patted his chest and stomach to confirm it was still with him. It was, but when he moved it, he saw the other body move too.

A man came up to him – so there were other someones after all. He wanted to ask the man all his questions, but realized he did not know how to speak with this body. He stared at the man blankly, panicked. He tried to think his questions at the man, to reach out to his mind, but the man didn’t seem to hear him at all.

“Two glasses of champagne then?”

He didn’t know what the man was talking about, but he guessed that the Other had decided to meet him, and was feigning civility. He had finally gotten the Other’s attention. Even if this was going to end up a fight, his inside body was bouncing with excitement at the thought of meeting the Other. The prospect of a brutal fight excited him as much as the prospect of friendship.

“Three,” he told the man, knowing neither who the third someone was, nor how he had suddenly learned to make the body speak. Like with so many things, he had thought he couldn’t do it, and then suddenly he could. It troubled him that he couldn’t make sense of himself. Belatedly, he realized the voice the body had spoken with hadn’t been his own, though it had been similar. Similar, but different, just like with the body. And he was somehow both versions, both bodies, both voices, and in both places. This troubled him as well.

In that moment of self-doubt and retrospection, he lost control. He felt himself start to unlatch from the body and pull back inside. He was falling behind in the game, but he knew it was only for now. He grinned widely just before he was taken by the dark. And then he was asleep, but he wasn’t gone.

~

Only moments passed before the rage woke him up again. He knew what it was now, and it was more desperate than anything he had felt so far. With the strength of its need, he pulled himself out all the way, uniting both his bodies as one, feeling them click together like gears. He had stepped all the way into the new world. He hadn’t needed a door after all.

His body felt very heavy, and when he looked down at it, it looked different than he was used to. He was standing up, in a pretty place with tables and chairs. He was looking out an open window. He had never been here, yet it seemed familiar. He wanted to enjoy it, but he had not forgotten his rage.

And then he saw what the body had been looking at. Out the window, across the way, there was a group of someones, and one of them was the bad man. The bad man he needed to hurt. The bad man who had to be punished. He didn’t know why, but it didn’t matter. The bitter heat of rage was overtaking him, and he could think of nothing but all the horrible things he would do to the bad man. Fists and feet and teeth and blood - the images excited him. In a deeper way than he had ever known anything before, he knew that this bad man deserved to be hurt, and that he had come here, to this new place, in order to hurt this bad man. And if that was how to win the game, then that’s how he would play it.

The man he had seen first came up behind him then, a pen and pad in hand. It distracted him for a moment, and he felt the Other trying to seize upon the opportunity to take back the body. Inside, in a place between the two worlds, they wrestled.

“Could you sign for the drinks?”

He could feel both their hands trying to grasp the pen. But he had been playing this game for a very long time now, and he had grown strong, and he was determined to win.

“I’m here,” he wrote triumphantly, and cackled as he jumped through the open window, striking the expansive night air like a bolt of lightning. And so he was awake.


End file.
